Wiggins loses race lead as Cobo stakes his claim for Vuelta victory on the Angliru

Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins lost the overall lead of the Vuelta a Espana this afternoon as the Angliru proved a climb too far for the Brit.

Juan Cose Cobo (Geox-TMC), who started the day in fourth overall 55 seconds behind Wiggins, took the stage and the leader’s red jersey after a brilliant performance on the mountains slopes that ramp up to 24%.

The Spaniard attacked with 6km to go, and crossed the line 48 seconds ahead of Wout Poels (Vacansoleil-DCM), Denis Menchov (Geox-TMC) and Britain’s Chris Froome.

Wiggins finished 1-21 behind, so by virtue of his time gains Cobo now leads Froome by 20 seconds, with Wiggins at 48 seconds.

ShowdownEven before Cobo broke clear, Froome once again worked tirelessly for Wiggins, and it wasn’t long before defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas), Dan Martin (Garmin-Cervelo) and Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) were dropped from the GC group.

However, the Sky duo could not respond when Cobo attacked, and their pace visibly slowed on the steeper sections.

At the same time, Cobo was putting more seconds into the chasers, although at 4km from the summit he only lead the Wiggins group by half a minute.

By now Wiggins was looking uncomfortable, and it was no surprise when he lost touch with Froome, Poels and Menchov towards the summit.

With a week until Madrid, there could still be a British winner, but Team Sky may be forced to reassess their GC options now that Froome – once again – is their best
placed rider.

What a awesome stage today, pity I had to watch it on a Dutch website, the lack of coverage of Brad and Chris doing brilliant riding in the Vuelta is disgusting, they don’t even mention it on the radio. We’ve got such good riders male and female slogging their guts out on the continent and cycling is more popular now than I’ve ever known it to be and I’ve been following it for years, thank god for eurosport but even they let us down today.